


A Quest For A Pet

by anistarrose



Series: Maybel 2018 [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (mostly), (not waddles i would never do that), Animals, Gen, Mabel taking after her grunkle and getting banned from places, Pets, Pre-Canon, brief animal death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 22:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14657369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: Mabel wanted a pet for a long time prior to meeting her chubby pink best friend.





	A Quest For A Pet

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Month of Maybel 2018 Week 1: Animals.

Mabel Pines had loved animals since the first moment she had seen one, and had wanted a pet since before most children her age even understood what a pet was.

At seven months, her first word was _unicorn_. Her second was _kitty_ , and her third was _pig_. _Dada_ and _mama_ were relegated to fourth and fifth.

When she and Dipper were barely a year old and their parents took them out in their stroller, she waved at every dog she saw out for a walk. The Pines would have loved to get a dog for themselves, but with twin babies rapidly growing into toddlers, they just didn’t have the time or energy to take care of one.

When Mabel was eighteen months old and their house briefly had a mouse infestation, she wasn’t frightened at all. Dipper screamed and wailed and cried every time he saw one, but Mabel just giggled and clapped her hands. Her parents joked to each other that she wanted to keep one of the mice as a pet. They were probably more right than they realized.

At Mabel and Dipper’s second birthday party, according to family legend, their great-uncle Stan visited, and attempted to gift to them a baby goat that he’d _somehow_ acquired. Mabel’s parents quickly vetoed that gift, much to her disappointment.

“Honestly, Stanford,” her mother had asked, “do you really think we’re going to let you pawn off a goat on us? How would you even expect us to take care of a goat in suburban California?”

“Where did you even _get_ it?” her father added.

“It wasn’t my idea to own a goat! It got pawned off on _me_ first!” Stan protested. “But fine. I’ll take him back to Gravity Falls.”

When Dipper and Mabel were six, they each got a pet fish, which lived together in a shared aquarium in the living room. Dipper instantly named his Captain Carp, after a character from one of his videogames. Mabel decided that Captain Carp needed a plucky sidekick (never mind that he already had a sidekick in Dipper’s game, she could make a _better_ one) and named hers Sir Sparklefin.

Sir Sparklefin had been a humble fish-knight in training back in fish medieval times, but then a magical octopus sent him into the future where his strength and bravery would be needed to fight crime alongside Captain Carp. Dipper initially complained, but the more he heard about Sir Sparklefin’s backstory, the more he had to admit that it sounded pretty cool.

When Mabel was nearly seven, Sir Sparklefin tragically passed away. Mabel was inconsolable for over a day, but then decided that the brave knight had merely faked his death to throw off his enemies and was now fighting evil in fish tanks on the opposite side of the world.

Her parents were glad that Mabel was back to being bright and cheerful, but were worried about how she’d responded to death with denial, so they privately decided not to get her any more pets for three or four years.

Mabel, of course, had other plans.

A few months later their house had a mouse again, and when one of the newer, more humane traps ended up catching it alive, Mabel begged her parents to let her keep it. When they visited the zoo one summer, Mabel got frighteningly close to jumping into the ostrich exhibit.

“Their necks were just so long and adorable!” Mabel had explained. “I wanted to tell the ostriches how much I loved them!”

When a stray poodle wandered into their yard, Mabel got her parents to agree that they could adopt it if they couldn’t find its original home. But the owner showed up the next day, and Mabel had to say goodbye to her new friend – though luckily, the owner lived only a few blocks away, and offered to let Mabel visit. Mabel happily took her up on the offer several times, but didn’t quit begging for a poodle of her own.

When Mabel was nine, she made a bet with a classmate that she’d get a pet unicorn before the end of the month. The classmate seemed pretty convinced that unicorns didn’t exist, but that didn’t discourage Mabel. When the class went on a field trip to the petting zoo, Mabel brought a traffic cone and duct tape.

Mabel slipped away from her class on the tour, telling Dipper she was going to the bathroom, and assessed her options. Most unicorns she’d seen in books or movies were white or pink, but she didn’t see any horses that fit those colors, unless she wanted to make a sheepicorn. Finally, she noticed a brown horse with dark, sad eyes, like it knew it was destined for something _more_.

“You! You’re perfect!” Mabel exclaimed. “Just hold on for a moment and we can go on a magical adventure together!” She got to work.

Really, her only mistake was trying to ride her newly-created unicorn out of the petting zoo in broad daylight. She probably should have come back when fewer people were around. Now she was banned from the place, but technically she’d been in possession of a unicorn for a full minute and a half, so in her book, she’d won the bet.

When they got wind of that incident, Mabel’s parents decided that getting a new family pet might be the least destructive option. So the summer before Mabel turned ten, the Pines family adopted a year-old cat named Smokey.

Mabel loved Smokey with her whole heart. Smokey didn’t _dislike_ Mabel, but he preferred her in moderation. He never scratched or bit her when he didn’t want to be cuddled, but he spent a lot of time under beds. When he sat on someone’s lap, it was usually Dipper’s, and it was usually while Dipper was playing videogames. Mabel liked to joke that her cat was just as big of a nerd as her brother.

Mabel was happy to have Smokey, of course, but she couldn’t help but wish for more. She’d always wanted a loyal animal companion that would love to follow her everywhere. For her creative writing assignments, she’d always give her protagonists animals as their best friends – dogs, foxes, ponies, owls, and in her absolute favorite story, a pig.

“Do you think Mom and Dad would let me keep a pig if I just randomly brought one home one day?” she asked Dipper once when they were eleven.

“Where would you even find a pig?” he replied, then his eyes widened. “Oh no. You’re not planning to get one somehow, are you?”

“Don’t be silly, Dipping-Sauce,” Mabel told him. “If I knew where to get a pig, you’d know about it by now! ‘Cause it would be living here with us, no matter what Mom and Dad think! Speaking of which, do you know if pigs roam in the wild anywhere in California?”

“I’m pretty sure they don’t, and if they did, I wouldn’t tell you where.”

Almost any other kid would have given up on their quest for a pig within a few months. But Mabel didn’t. The walls of her room filled with pig stickers, and her stuffed animal collection accumulated more and more pig plushies. She knitted herself several pig sweaters.

And then when she was twelve, at one fateful fair in Gravity Falls, Oregon, she finally met a fifteen-pound bundle of joy and named him Waddles.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank the Gravity Falls canon, for providing me with such wonderful inspiration regarding the unicorn incident.
> 
> Also, comments are always appreciated!


End file.
